Gone

by Cronk, LN

  No response. He just stared straight ahead, slack-jawed.

  “It looks like Chris took out that bush that was along the sidewalk – you know, that one that was near the light pole? Probably a good idea, I noticed it was looking pretty sad last summer. Maybe we can get down to the nursery in a couple of months and pick out something that’ll do better there.”

  Fortunately Laci wasn’t gone too long. She returned, carrying a small, white bottle.

  “I got some lotion for your hands,” she told my dad, twisting the top of it off and shaking some of it out. She sat back down in front of him and picked up his hand again. She looked up at me. “They’re really rough.”

  I nodded at her and watched as she slowly rubbed the lotion into the skin on his fingers and onto the back of his hand. I don’t know how she did it, but she managed to find more stuff to talk to him about as she did. After a moment he closed his eyes and something that might have passed for a smile crossed his lips.

  “Does that feel good, Dad?” I asked. He nodded. There was no question about it this time. He nodded.

  Laci glanced at me and I smiled at her. She smiled back.

  I settled back into my chair and watched her as she talked effortlessly to my dad, gently massaging lotion into his hands.

  That evening Laci and I went to the high school to watch a basketball game and afterward we went out to eat with Tanner.

  “What time are Jordan and Charlotte coming tomorrow?” he asked after he’d been through the buffet line for a third time.

  “They’ll be here in time for lunch,” I explained.

  “Oh.”

  “You wanna come?”

  “I can’t,” he said. “I’m teaching a class, remember?”

  Tanner was a certified conceal-and-carry instructor – I did remember that – but I didn’t remember that he was teaching a class tomorrow. I wasn’t sure if that was an “Alzheimer’s forget” or a “normal forget”, so I just nodded.

  “Have you talked to them?” I asked.

  “I talked to Jordan last night,” he admitted.

  “And?” I prodded when he didn’t say anything else.

  Tanner shrugged and shook his head. I sighed.

  “She’s going to be fine,” Laci said, taking my hand.

  I glanced away.

  “She will be,” Tanner agreed. “You know how she is.”

  I looked at Tanner and felt sad, thinking about everything Charlotte had already been through . . . and about everything that lay ahead of her. Mrs. White was doing great now, but people can only live for so long. And she had Jordan to worry about and now the fact that she was going to lose me . . .

  I glanced at Laci. She looked sad too and I suddenly remembered that I was supposed to be keeping a positive attitude.

  “You’re right,” I told Tanner, nodding. “All Charlotte needs is to take it out on someone for a little while and then she’ll get over it and be fine.

  “Poor Jordan,” I went on sadly, sighing and shaking my head. I smiled at Laci and she laughed.

  “It might be you that she takes it out on!” Tanner said. “She might be saving it all up for tomorrow.”

  “I’m slowly dying from dementia!” I protested. “She’s not going to take it out on me!”

  “Maybe not,” Tanner agreed, “but I’d be ready for anything if I were you.”

  “I know,” I smiled. “I am.”

  I glanced at Laci and she gave me another smile. Silently I marveled again at my newfound power to influence her mood.

  “Hey,” Tanner said. “You wanna play racquetball in the morning? My class doesn’t start until ten . . .”

  I glanced at Laci, who gave me a “go ahead” shrug.

  “Sure,” I agreed. “Pick me up at seven.”

  Apparently the fact that I was “slowly dying from dementia” didn’t make Tanner feel as if he needed to take it easy on me on the racquetball court or anything.

  “I see this new medicine you’re on has done wonders for your backhand,” he noted sardonically the next morning after he’d soundly beat me in our first three games.

  I smirked at him.

  “Wanna go for the best outta seven?” he suggested with a malicious smile.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, seriously.

  “Wanna go again?”

  “Huh?”

  “Do you wanna play another game?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked again.

  “What do you mean, ‘What do I mean’?”

  “Do I know you?” I asked slowly.

  He took his goggles off and looked at me, a distraught expression covering his face. I looked at him blankly for another moment and then finally gave him a malicious smile of my own.

  “See?” I said, bouncing the ball off of his forehead and heading up to the serving box. “I’m not the only one who’s fun to pick on!”

  ~ ~ ~

  A FEW HOURS later, Jordan and Charlotte’s car pulled into the driveway. When I heard a door slam shut, I went to the window and saw Jordan striding up the walkway.

  I watched carefully, looking for any hints in Jordan’s movement that might indicate symptoms of Huntington’s, the disease that had claimed the life of his and Tanner’s brother, Chase, years earlier. Huntington’s disease is inherited, and once Chase had been diagnosed it had meant that there was a fifty-fifty chance that either Tanner or Jordan would have it as well. Tanner had immediately gotten himself tested and found out that he did not have Huntington’s, but Jordan–

  The doorbell rang and I opened the door.

  “Hi!” I said, giving him a hug.

  “How you doing, Dave?” he asked, pounding me on the back.

  “Not bad,” I said. “Not bad. How ’bout you?”

  “Not bad,” he smiled.

  “Where’s Charlotte?”

  “She’ll be right in,” he answered.

  But a few minutes passed and Charlotte still didn’t arrive. Laci came into the living room and greeted Jordan and we stood by the door and talked and finally I peeked through the blinds into the driveway and saw that Charlotte was still sitting in the passenger seat, staring out her window, looking away from the house.

  “She’s having a hard time,” Jordan said quietly from behind me, laying a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll go get her.”

  “No,” I told him, shaking my head. “I’ll go.”

  I walked out the front door and down the sidewalk to the driveway. Charlotte glanced toward the house, saw me coming, and quickly turned her head away from me. I heard her lock the doors.

  I tried the handle of the driver’s side anyway.

  “Charlotte,” I said loudly, tapping on the window. “Let me in.”

  She shook her head, still not looking at me. All of a sudden the doors unlocked, but Charlotte hadn’t moved. I glanced back at the living room window and saw Jordan pointing a remote at the car. Surprised, Charlotte looked up at him too and then – realizing what he’d done – recovered in time to relock the doors before I could get in. Together they unlocked and locked the doors another time or two before I managed to try the handle at just the right moment and open the door, but as I climbed in, Charlotte immediately reached for her door handle and tried to get out. I grabbed the sleeve of her jacket and stopped her.

  “How old are you?” I asked. “Ten?”

  At that, she let go of the door handle and covered her face with her hands, sobbing.

  I let go of her jacket and wrapped my arms around her. She let me pull her close and then buried her head against my chest, weeping. I just held her for a while as she sobbed.

  “It’s okay,” I finally said softly after she’d quieted down a bit.

  “I don’t want this to be happening,” she whispered, still against my chest.

  “I know,” I said, squeezing her, “but it’s going to be okay.”

  She pulled away from me slightly and looked at me.

  “How?” she demanded. “How is it going to be
okay?”

  I didn’t answer her, but I took her hand and held it tight. We looked at each other for a long moment.

  “I love you,” she finally said, breaking down and crying against my shoulder again.

  “I know,” I said, squeezing her hand. “I love you, too.”

  Finally she managed to pull herself together and she sat back with a look of resolve on her face.

  “Neurological diseases suck!” she said, wiping her sleeve across her face. I gave her a little smile.

  “How’s Jordan doing, anyway?” I asked. “He looks good.”

  “He is,” Charlotte agreed. “No symptoms.”

  I gave her a bigger smile.

  “Can we go in now?” I asked her. “Or do you want to sit out here in the car and pout some more?”

  She looked at me for moment.

  “I want to pout,” she finally decided.

  “It’s too cold out here. Come on.” I gave her one more smile, and then I promised, “You can pout inside.”

  ~ ~ ~

  MONDAY I CALLED my boss, Josef, and told him what was going on.

  I also quit my job.

  Okay, technically, I didn’t quit . . . I retired. And, technically, I didn’t even retire, because Josef insisted that they wanted to contract me as a “special consultant” on the addition to the orphanage. Both of us knew this was nothing more than a pity gesture, but it was one that I gratefully accepted.

  “How did it go?” Laci asked when I got off the phone.

  “Fine,” I said. I told her that I was still going to get to work with Dorito on the addition and she smiled at me in an understanding way – this was the first project that Dorito and I’d had the chance to work on together.

  Now it would also be the last.

  “You’ll have to call Dorito and tell him,” she said, and I nodded. Then she hit me with a bombshell by adding, “I quit too.”

  Laci and I had talked for several days about whether or not I should quit. I knew that my company would have worked with me – allowed me to stay on in whatever capacity I felt capable of, but I also knew that from that point on, someone would always be double checking everything that I did, and having someone question every move that I made wasn’t something I was really interested in having happen.

  We had never talked – even for the briefest moment – about her quitting.

  “You what?”

  “I quit,” she repeated.

  “You quit,” I said, flatly.

  She nodded.

  “Why in the world would you quit?”

  “Because,” she said, shrugging again, “you’re not going to be working anymore and I want to spend time with you.”

  “You’re just going to sit around and visit with me all day?” An image flashed through my mind of Laci massaging my hands with lotion.

  “Well, no,” she said, “I thought we would go do stuff . . . you know – travel and stuff?”

  “Travel?”

  “Yeah. Go do all the things we’ve always wanted to do.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well,” she said, “we could go to The Keys and Seattle and Carlsbad Caverns and–”

  “Carlsbad Caverns?!” I laughed. “Since when have you wanted to go to Carlsbad Caverns?”

  “I . . . I’ve always wanted to go there.”

  “No, you haven’t,” I argued. “I’ve always wanted to go to Carlsbad Caverns. You’ve always wanted to help little orphans down in Mexico – and that’s what I want, too. I want to go back there and both of us can help out.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head adamantly. “We’re not going back.”

  “Laci!” I cried. “What are you talking about? It’s bad enough that I had to quit my job! I’m not gonna let you quit too!”

  “I already did,” she reminded me. (Not that this mattered at all – both of us knew that they’d take her back in a heartbeat.) “I don’t want to go back to work – I want to spend time with you!”

  “What are you gonna do? Sit around all day and watch me twiddle my thumbs?”

  “No – we’re going to go do things,” she reminded me.

  “I . . . I really appreciate what you’re trying to do here,” I assured her, taking her hand, “but realistically, honey, there’s probably going to be a limit to how much we’re going to be able to do.”

  “Why?” she asked, “you’re doing great!”

  “Sure, right now I am,” I agreed, “but I’m not going to be this way forever – who knows how long it’s going to last?” (According to everything I’d been able to read online about my medicine, I had between nine months and three years before things started going downhill again.)

  “Well, we’re going to take advantage of it right now and do stuff while we can.” She looked at me stubbornly. “We’re not going back to Mexico.”

  “And then what? Once I get so I can’t travel or whatever, then are you going to sit around and watch me twiddle my thumbs?” Actually it was probably going to be more like sitting around and watching me drool on myself, but I didn’t say that. “Laci . . . I want you to be able keep working . . . I want you to keep doing what you love!”

  “Do you honestly think I’m going to love going off to work every day while I’m worried about you?”

  “That’s why you need to put me somewhere,” I muttered.

  “Where?” she asked calmly. “Some nice nursing home in Mexico City so you can have a bunch of ‘quack doctors who got their medical degrees off the back of a cereal box’ talking to you all day in Spanish?”

  I sighed, shook my head, and looked away. And then I started thinking about what she was suggesting.

  We would be closer to better health care once those little blue wonder pills stopped working their magic . . . and closer to clinical trials too if we decided to try one of those. Not only that, but we’d also be closer to most of the kids – it would be easier for them to come and visit us . . . easier for them to come and help Laci.

  I thought about what it would be like for Laci once I wasn’t able to do anything anymore. And I thought about what – if anything – would make Laci the happiest once that time came. And I knew that what Laci wanted . . . no – what she needed – was to be able to do everything in her power to make me happy and to take care of me the very best way that she could.

  And I realized in an instant that this was what I needed to let her do.

  I looked at her – at this gift that she wanted so desperately to give to me – and I saw that if I would take it, I would be giving her a gift right back.

  I put my arms around her and looked into her eyes and I thought how glad I was that God had given this woman to me to be my wife.

  “Okay,” I finally nodded.

  Immediately I knew I had made the right decision because she gave me the broadest smile I’d seen from her in months.

  “But can we go to Portland, too?” I asked as she smiled at me happily.

  “Oregon?” she wanted to know, “Or Maine?”

  “Both,” I answered.

  ~ ~ ~

  BEFORE WE MADE any arrangements to start traveling to Portland or the Keys or anywhere else, we decided that we’d better take care of some of the most important projects around the house in order to make it livable. Dorito put our home in Mexico on the market for us and we made arrangements with Jessica that Laci and I would buy Dad’s as soon as ours in Mexico sold. I think Jess was glad we weren’t going back to Mexico (and especially glad that Dad’s house was going to be our problem now).

  We spent a day at the giant mega-hardware store picking out what we wanted and then I started working on the kitchen counters while Laci began painting and wallpapering the master bedroom.

  I’d always enjoyed do-it-yourself projects in the past, but we’d both been at it hard and heavy for about three days when I unplugged the tile saw and went into the bedroom. Laci was balanced on a ladder, edging the ceiling.

  “Laci?”

  �
�What?” she asked, not taking her eyes off of her edger.

  I walked over to the ladder and peered up at her.

  “This isn’t what I want to be doing,” I told her.

  She looked down at me.

  “Huh?”

  “I don’t want to fix up the house,” I said. “This isn’t how I want to be spending my time.”

  She looked down and stared at me meaningfully for a moment.

  “I thought this was what you wanted to do,” she finally said.

  “I know,” I admitted, “I thought it was too, but it’s not. This isn’t what I want to be doing.”

  She looked down at me for another moment and then set her edger in the roller tray and descended the ladder, one step at a time. When she was standing next to me she asked, “What do you want to be doing?”

  “I have some ideas,” I said, grinning and raising my eyebrows at her.

  “I have to finish this wall while the edge is still wet,” she said, pointing at the ceiling and trying not to smile.

  “And then?”

  “And then we’ll see.”

  “Boy,” I said disappointedly. “I thought we were doing things that I wanted to do!”

  “I really can’t quit until this wall’s done,” she said earnestly.

  “Fine,” I said, hanging my head. “I’ll go back to the kitchen. Hopefully I won’t cut any fingers off.”

  “I won’t be long,” she promised.

  “Uh-huh,” I said, dejectedly and I went back to my tile saw.

  It actually didn’t take very long for her to finish the wall and we spent the rest of the afternoon together in the master bedroom amidst the smell of fresh paint and wallpaper paste.

  “This is much better than fixing the house up,” I told Laci as we lay next to each other.

  She smiled at me.

  “We have to finish, though,” she said. “We can’t live here like this . . . this place is a disaster!”